Makes sense but what makes them different? The fact that the
Edit Selection Tool can select mutiple edits?
Yes. This might be because you want to simultaneously edit several video layers and a couple of related audio tracks. When you select an edit point and nudge it in either direction isn't it essentially doing exactly what the roll tool is?
In other words if I move the edit point to the right, in towards clip B, it's going to show more frames of clip A and less of the beginning of A precisely like the
Roll Tool will.
Again you're right, but with the Roll Edit tool, you can do it with a transition in place. I find roll edits very handy when fine-tuning a sequence. How about the
Ripple Tool? If want to trim back the end of the last clip in a project will the
Ripple Tool (in this particular instance) work just like the standard
Selection Tool by highlighting the last clips furthest right edge and draging toward the left shortening it's length?
In that instance, yes. The real point of the Ripple Tool is to automatically shorten or lengthen the duration sequence as you edit.
Also the animations while dragging a clip that is nudged between two others with the
Ripple Tool confuse me. For example if you have Clip A, Clip B, and Clip C all butted up against each other (straight cuts) and you highlight the inner edge of the beginning of Clip B and start dragging to the right changing the point in which Clip B starts the animation show the place holder for Clip B shrinking from both ends, if you go far enough it actually inverts and starts to grow (if that makes sense?). I understand what the tool does but the feedback animation perplexes me.
You have me here... there are several animations for the more complex functions that I find confusing as well. While I'm sure that they all make sense in some context, they don't to me. Maybe when I get smarter... 
What you describe sounds almost as if you totally inverted the order to A-C-B and I don't know if that's possible. 
